


The First Breath You Take After You Give Up

by robotboy



Series: Flying Blind [9]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Implicit Cassian/K2, M/M, Mission Fic, Mouth-to-Mouth, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, blink and you'll miss it surprise ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29799168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotboy/pseuds/robotboy
Summary: They never parted except in a stalemate, and they never met except in a fight. This was no different.Well, it was wetter.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Din Djarin, Din Djarin & K-2SO
Series: Flying Blind [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698328
Comments: 24
Kudos: 58





	The First Breath You Take After You Give Up

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted by Melo Mapo, aeons ago, to write Din and Kallus meeting: this is brief and conflicted, but finally happened. [r3zuri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/r3zuri/works) also sent the prompt for Din/'How mad would you be if I kissed you?' and this was a perfect fit.
> 
> Some themes and moments are reworked from [You, Me, and the Monsters Inside Us](), and I seem to have a penchant for hypothermic Cassian, previously seen in Feedback Loop.
> 
> Lovingly beta read by bright-elen and blxcksqvadron.

There were three things Din Djarin thought somebody really should have told him earlier: the Jedi was called Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker was a hero of the Rebellion. And said Rebellion had scattered to the winds in the dawn of the New Republic.

He had managed to track down a shady outpost of Rebellion screws whom Cara promised knew everything about everyone. What Din had failed to confirm was whether they felt inclined to tell random bounty hunters who came asking for the location of the Jedi temple.

‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ said the man who’d held him at blaster-point the moment Din stepped off his boarding ramp.

The man was taller than any human needed to be. Din found himself wishing he’d stayed on the ramp, so they were eye-to-visor. As it was, he was mostly talking to blonde sideburns.

‘My son is with him,’ Din said. It took all his self-control not to reach for the spear and settle this discussion quickly. It would be foolish: Din knew the prickling at the back of his neck when there was a sniper aiming at him.

‘If Skywalker didn’t see fit to tell you where he went, I hardly see why we would betray him.’

The man’s accent was half of what set Din’s teeth on edge. It had the lingering blunted vowels of lower Coruscant, but the more Din annoyed him, the more an Imperial whine slipped in. He strode off on those inordinately long legs, and Din struggled to keep up without looking like he was rushing.

‘Look, I’m not giving you the run-around,’ the man scowled at his terminal, switching between code cylinders. ‘The only Jedi temple I know about was destroyed ten years ago.’

‘Then where—?’

‘Oh, karabast,’ the man muttered, eyes flicking at something behind Din. Din turned, barely holding back a flinch. An Imperial security droid was striding toward him. Given the man seemed more exasperated than outright panicked, Din could only assume this was a base for ex-Imperials.

‘Kallus,’ the droid sidestepped Din to loom over the terminal. ‘He missed extraction.’

The circular joints reminded Din of dark troopers—his neck twinged with the memory of the fist pounding repeatedly into his helmet. That was definitely the source of the pain, and nothing to do with the human a head taller than him and a droid that towered twice as high as that.

The man—Kallus—winced. ‘How long has he been missing?’

‘Four hours,’ the droid replied.

Kallus raised an eyebrow. ‘Give it another cycle. We’ll send a team.’

‘The odds of him surviving a cycle after he missed the window are—‘

‘Less than ideal, I’m sure,’ Kallus interrupted before the droid could rattle off numbers. ‘Do you see a ship we can spare? Until the Ghost Team get back, my hands are tied.’

The droid adopted a decidedly un-Imperial slouch that conveyed more insolence than Din had ever seen in a synthetic. Kallus pinched his nose.

‘You can take point on the recovery,’ he offered the droid as a compromise. ‘Develop a strategy.’

The droid’s servos made a grinding noise. Din couldn’t tell if that was the sound of strategising or an emotional outburst.

Kallus’ communicator flashed. He broke into another burst of swearing, and stormed off. This left the Imperial droid staring at Din, his head angled curiously. Din shifted, careful not to show fear. He wouldn’t be able to draw a blaster in time, but the darksaber would likely slice right through the hull if the droid lunged.

The droid didn’t lunge: he stooped to look closely at Din, optics flicking up and down.

‘He’s not here,’ the droid said. ‘You may have overheard.’

‘Skywalker?’

The droid straightened. ’What do you want with Skywalker?’

‘He has my son,’ Din gritted out.

‘You have a _son?’_

Din opened his mouth to ask _why is that so hard to believe,_ then registered the droid’s earlier surprise. ‘Who did you _think_ I was here for?’

‘Cassian Andor,’ the droid said, like it was obvious.

Din blinked. He hadn’t heard that name in many years, but it cut him to the bone as sharp as ever.

‘You’re Cassian’s droid,’ he realised.

‘Cassian is _my_ human,’ the droid corrected him.

‘It’s Kay, right?’

‘I’m surprised you remember,’ Kay spoke loftily, although it wasn’t difficult to be lofty up there.

‘He talked about you a lot,’ Din muttered. ‘So, he’s alive?’

‘Not for much longer, by my calculations,’ Kay threw a disparaging glance in the direction Kallus had gone.

‘What happened?’

‘He failed to reach his extraction point on time.’

Din held his breath. It had been easier to think that Cassian, like most Rebels, must have been killed in action. That, or like most spies, he’d disappeared without a trace. The latter had been true for the last six years, anyway. Somehow the fact that Cassian _had been_ alive and freshly _might not be_ alive was more than he could think about while an Imperial droid glared balefully at him.

The tang of blood filled his mouth, and he realised he was biting his lip.

‘Where was the extraction point?’ he asked.

‘The north pole of Kamino,’ Kay answered, and he was already walking toward Din’s ship.

That was the problem: he couldn’t stop tonguing at the wound.

*

They never parted except in a stalemate, and they never met except in a fight. This was no different.

Well, it was wetter.

Cassian’s speeder wasn’t designed for high-speed chases. Din could tell from the way its bulky shape careened madly to dodge the cannon fire. The bolts of light were the only illumination in the storm, Kamino’s polar waters blackened by the dead of winter. Cassian’s vessel was a silhouette obscuring the grey-capped waves, pitching and plunging as he fled his pursuers.

Din’s own ship could barely withstand the high winds, its engines roaring. The targeting system flickered with static, struggling to lock onto the enemy guards. Kay shoved him to one side and Din barely had a chance to argue before the droid had shot one down, yanking the stabilisers to compensate for the kick.

Cassian took down the other, in what was either a spectacular spinning collision or a fortunate accident. Likely the latter, Din realised, as the speeder crested a wave the size of a cruiser and flung Cassian into the sea.

‘Can you swim?’ Kay demanded, opening the boarding ramp without waiting for an answer.

‘Not in—‘

‘Figure it out,’ Kay clipped a cable to Din’s belt and shoved him out of the ship.

Din yelped, scrambling to activate his jetpack. The cape whipped in the wind, tangling his arm, and he barely had time to gasp before he was underwater.

Everything was black, and the salt scrubbed him raw. He churned to get his arms free. Even as water flooded the helmet, he switched it to heat vision. The world went indigo, but there, sinking fast, was a streak of yellow.

He kicked until he was pointed toward it, and gave the jetpack a burst. The drag felt thicker than water, and his fingers were already locking against the chill. The heat took a humanoid shape, legs limp and head lolling. Din’s chest pounded, lungs clamping around the lack of air. His head was starting to get murky, focusing only on the target. Not the deadly temperature or the length of the cable, the likelihood of overshooting in the jetpack or the possibility of drowning. Nothing except the muted crash with the shape he hoped was Cassian. He wrapped an arm around it and veered toward the surface.

Only, which way had the surface been? Everything was black and cold and airless, thick as wet duracrete. The only thing beyond himself was the taut cable. Tethered to his ship. He pulled it, and the moment some slack gave, he cranked the jetpack to its maximum.

Bursting into the air felt somehow colder, the sudden weight almost dragging them back down. The line went tight again, a painful pressure on Din’s hip. His elbow screamed as Cassian almost fell from it, and he locked his shivering leg around to secure him better. He set the jetpack to hover, and the line reeled them both slowly away from the icy depths.

Only when he clanged against the floor of his cargo bay, throat burning and shudders overtaking him, did he think of the Quarrens and their boat. Of how it had felt to almost lose someone, to be so sure he would drown with them, and to be achingly, miserably wrong.

Din’s stomach heaved, and he winced at the flood of light. It took a moment to make sense of what he was seeing: the droid, rolling Cassian onto his side and plunging long fingers into his mouth. Clearing it, Din realised, then pressing under his jaw to find a pulse.

He only knew that face from the forestalled bounty hunt: glimpsed through crowds, at sunset, in the gloomy hotel room where Cassian had choked him out. This face was pale, clammy, slack. Nothing like the man he’d known, come to care for in the weeks they spent as cellmates.

‘Is…’ Din swallowed what felt like a pincushion. ‘Is he…?’

‘Heartbeat,’ Kay said. ‘Not breathing.’

‘Shit,’ Din crawled closer.

‘I can’t—‘ Kay turned to him. ‘You need to do it.’

Kay looked oddly organic, reaching for Din to urge him closer. Din knew the theory, before Kay barraged him with instructions. His ears rang through Kay’s words, and he reached a trembling hand to unclasp the helmet.

It wasn’t the first time he’d taken it off. It wasn’t the fifth. His heart stopped regardless, only to come rattling back with a vengeance with the blast of cold on his cheeks.

Kay was tilting Cassian’s head back. Din took a deep breath, for himself as much as Cassian. He positioned his hands, one pinching Cassian’s nostrils, one propping his chin. He shut his eyes, blocking out the anxious droid hovering too close and the very real possibility that Cassian was dying in the midst of Din having a dogmatic crisis, and pressed their mouths together.

It was an ugly breath, stuffy and salted, pushing back into Din’s mouth. He persevered, and somewhere in the third breath, the shape of Cassian’s jaw felt familiar in his grip, the texture of his beard and the hint of a distinctive smell under brine.

Cassian coughed, and their foreheads smacked together so hard Din bit his tongue. He reeled to one side as Kay propped Cassian upright, rubbing his back as he gagged and heaved. There was a rasping vulnerability to his gasps: Din had always known him to be sharply controlled.

‘Kay?’ Cassian grasped Kay’s elbow, eyes squeezed shut. If they felt anything like Din’s, they were stinging with salt. ‘How did you…?’

‘I didn’t,’ Kay said, nudging Din’s helmet back toward him before Cassian thought to look.

Din lay a hand on the helmet. It was strange, touching it from the outside, the way the dome fit the curve of his palm. His thumb found the groove to pick it up, but, for reasons he was too damn tired to examine, he didn’t.

 _‘I_ did,’ he croaked, and Cassian’s head snapped toward him. That dark gaze was as piercing as ever, darting over Din’s armour—of course, he wouldn’t know about all the beskar—before finding his face.

Cassian’s mouth opened, and nothing came out. Din could still taste him.

‘If reacquainting yourselves will take this long,’ Kay drew himself up, heading to the cockpit. ‘I’m getting us out of here.’

Cassian nodded, and Kay’s hand squeezed his shoulder. He kept frowning at Din, and when he found his words, they were: ‘You’re not—‘

‘It’s me.’

Din had last proven it by the scar on his hand: this was how he realised that his fingers were rigid, locking up from the cold. The adrenaline of the rescue was slipping away, and the freezing water had finally burrowed under his armour to find his skin. He held his breath as if it could keep some heat inside himself, and when it escaped, it was with a chatter of teeth.

‘Oh,’ Cassian stared at the floor. His hair clung in slick lines to his forehead. ‘You can put it back on. I’m sorry.’

‘Hnh?’ Din scrubbed a hand into his eyes, clearing them. His sinuses itched. ‘Put what?’

‘Your helmet,’ Cassian said.

Din sighed, the breath wobbling as much as his joints. ‘It’s not...’

‘Where’s the heating?’ Kay called from the cockpit.

Din scowled as he racked his brains. ‘Broken.’

The ship lurched as Kay steered them out of the atmosphere. ‘There’s an eighty percent chance Cassian has hypothermia.’

Cassian rolled his eyes, but there was a worryingly blue tinge to his lips.

Din shuffled closer, and Cassian curled up to hug his knees. His eyes were glassy, averted. A drop of water clung to his nose: he wiped it on his sodden sleeve.

‘The helmet,’ Din murmured. ‘It’s...

His cowl itched around his throat, the seawater-laden cape threatening to strangle him. His mouth tasted like tears.

‘Things changed.’

That was all the explanation he could muster. Really, was there anything else to explain?

Cassian stole a glance at him, then another, as if it were still forbidden. ‘You saved my life.’

Din focused on wrenching his glove off, his shoulders hunched against the praise. He held an unsteady hand to Cassian’s cheek, ignoring the twitch it provoked.

‘You’re cold,’ he said.

‘So’re you,’ Cassian raised an eyebrow.

‘We need to warm you up.’

The sonic would do no good. The bed had blankets, though Din couldn’t remember if those helped. He braced on the wall and got to his feet. Cassian took his proffered hand, and they made their staggering way to Din’s berth. Din couldn’t help but notice that Cassian was still skin and bones.

His knee smacked into the hull as he lifted Cassian into the bed, but all of him felt like a bruise anyway. Cassian wouldn’t let go of Din’s bandolier, so he leaned against the bunk as Cassian curled in the corner of it. He took Cassian’s hand and rubbed it between his own. Cassian bowed his head to blow on their fingers, though it brought more comfort than warmth.

Din started with his cowl, pulling the itch away from his throat. The weight of the cape dragged it smacking to the floor as soon as he got it over his head. The bandolier and jetpack went the same way, and he was exhausted enough to drop the pauldrons and cuirass unceremoniously. The clanging rang off the walls and Cassian was definitely staring, but unbuckling his belt with stiff fingers took all Din’s concentration. As it turned out in the process of undressing, the only bit of him left dry was the heel of his left sock. The sheer effort of the task kept his skin from prickling at the open air. It was only when Cassian tried to pull him into the bed that he realised how chilly he was.

‘You…’ he crawled in, reaching for the opening in Cassian’s shirt. It clung, white fabric turning transparent, in a way Din might have found very alluring if he wasn’t worried about Cassian dying.

‘Yeah,’ Cassian gave him a lightning-quick smile. ‘Good idea.’

He managed to get his shirt unfastened before the shivering overtook him. Din shuffled up to help, peeling it away from his arms. Cassian still wouldn’t quite look at him, his brow pinched with discomfort. Din tried to ignore it, then he remembered: some incident since their first meeting had left Cassian with vicious scarring across his back.

‘I’m sorry,’ it came out as a whisper.

The crow’s feet—those were new, too—deepened around Cassian’s eyes.

‘Let’s get this done,’ Cassian said, bundling his dripping shirt into a ball.

He was shaking too hard to deal with his belt, the kind of full-body tremors that had Din worried. It probably showed on his face. Everything did.

But Din was nothing if not dogged: he stripped Cassian bare, and tossed the dampened topmost blanket away with his clothes. Fortunately—or not, since the heating was broken in the first place—the layered bedding underneath was dry. Weak as he was, Cassian showed no hesitation in coaxing Din under the covers. There was a faint warmth between their chests. Cassian’s foot was painfully cold, but Din reasoned that meant his own shins hadn’t frozen off yet.

They were shaking at different rates, Cassian’s teeth rattling and Din’s chest heaving. He wrapped his arms around Cassian’s shoulders and used the corner of the blanket to rub his hair. Cassian scrunched up his nose like a child being washed. Din gently dried the bloodless tips of his ears, and Cassian stuffed his face into Din’s shoulder.

‘Hello,’ he said, and his breath tickled with heat. ‘I didn’t say that yet.’

‘Hi, Cassian,’ Din couldn’t help but smile, privately, while Cassian’s lips were clammy on his skin.

‘How did—‘ Cassian’s teeth interrupted him with a chatter. He wriggled, one hand curling around Din’s waist to pull him closer. ‘What’re you doing here?’

‘Your droid roped me into it,’ Din pressed his palm to a smooth patch of skin on Cassian’s back. Maybe it was getting warmer. That, or he was getting colder.

‘Not _my_ droid,’ Cassian corrected him.

‘Right,’ Din huffed. That ached. ‘You’re _his_ human.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ Cassian took a deep breath, letting it wash out over Din’s chest. Din’s heart kicked up its pace.

They’d held each other like this, back in the cell. Done a lot more than hold each other, Din recalled, once Cassian had recovered from his last ordeal.

A silence fell. Din realised Cassian had stopped shivering. He nosed Cassian’s hair, holding his breath until he felt Cassian stir, switching to tuck the other foot between Din’s ankles. Their hips were too close to ignore both of them being naked. Din sighed. He might be getting warmer, but not warm enough to do much about it.

‘You going to sleep?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Cassian whispered, his fingers tracing circles at Din’s lower back. ‘Are you?’

‘No.’

Cassian shifted, with more strength than he’d possessed before, to pillow his head on Din’s arm. Din kept himself still as Cassian studied his face.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked.

Din sighed. The question could have pulled them back into Kamino’s orbit.

‘Other Mandalorians.’

Cassian nodded thoughtfully. Din waited for a comment on his eyes, Cassian stared at them for so long, but it never came.

His thumb skirted the scars on Cassian’s back. ‘What happened to _you?’_

‘The Death Star.’

Din had to stop himself from asking: _really?_ Instead, he moved so his thigh was pressed between Cassian’s. There was heat there, finally.

‘This okay?’ he asked.

Cassian rolled his hips forward, nodding. He reached for Din’s jaw, calloused fingertips stroking through Din’s sparse beard. ‘Is this?’

Din swallowed, his throat bobbing like a rock, and gave a nod that pressed into Cassian’s touch.

‘How mad would you be if I kissed you?’ Cassian whispered.

‘Oh,’ Din’s lip trembled. He might have been uncertain about the heat returning to his body, but the blood flushed in his face just fine. _‘Oh._ Yes.’

Which wasn’t quite the answer to the question: Cassian kept searching for that. There was something opaque about his eyes—he was a spy, Din reminded himself, and the hint of doubt in his expression was probably deliberate. But then Cassian kissed him, and Din remembered to close his eyes, and everything before it stopped mattering.

He knew Cassian better in the dark. Cassian kissed hungrily, his hand tangling at the nape of Din’s neck. It was nothing like the terror of breathing air back into him: there was room to gasp, and Din did when Cassian crushed their noses together. Cassian’s tongue was as quick as the rest of him, and Din could tell he was holding back from sinking those sharp little teeth into Din’s lip. Din whined, and Cassian echoed. The kiss was ten years overdue.

They slipped apart, the gaps growing longer between kisses until Din’s mouth was resting on Cassian’s cheek, nose tucked between his temple and the pillow. Cassian played with his hair, looping curls around his knuckles and combing blunt nails along Din’s scalp. If he kept going, Din would be the one who needed to learn how to breathe again.

‘Was that your first kiss?’ he asked, and Din felt the small smile that went with it.

‘Yes,’ he lied.

Whether Cassian saw through it or not, the answer seemed to settle him. He nestled in Din’s arms, and Din took the time to tuck the blankets as snugly around them as possible. Cassian whimpered a wordless complaint when Din moved his foot: Din was forcibly drawn closer by Cassian’s leg hooking around him. He realised, with his last shred of consciousness, that Kay must have dimmed the lights at some point.

The noise was what woke him. His instincts figured engine trouble before he’d managed to unknot himself from the blankets, or from Cassian. It took a moment for his brain to catch up with the naked man in his bed, and then the hulking shape behind it. Two circles flashed in the gloom, an eerie imitation of eyes.

‘Stop it,’ the synthetic voice muttered. ‘You’ll wake him.’

‘What are you _doing_ here?’ Din hissed, tucking Cassian’s head under his chin to look at the droid.

‘Thinking very hard,’ Kay said. When Din frowned, Kay continued: ‘It overheats my processors.’

Din blinked. It _was_ warmer in the bunk, the crispy kind of heat he associated with broken machinery. A low humming resonated in his chest.

‘I never got to thank you,’ Kay said.

‘Thank me?’ Din’s brow wrinkled. ‘What for?’

‘You took care of him in that cell,’ Kay’s photoreceptors tilted in Cassian’s direction. ‘You treated his wounds and kept him sane. You loved him.’

Din opened his mouth to deny or demur. But he remembered someone else, slender and silver, who’d cupped his cheek and said: _You’re in love, Djarin, and I don’t think it’s with me._

Din had promised him the stars, anyway.

‘You would have rescued me,’ the breath was jagged when it escaped him. ‘I put you at risk, refusing.’

‘It seems you did well enough for yourself,’ Kay said. Then he moved, a dip in the mattress and an alarmingly large shadow moving against the wall. Cassian was stirring, rolling onto his back so Din was curled around one side of him.

‘Kay?’ he croaked, tilting his head toward the droid. ‘Hmm.’

The sound was deeply satisfied: that was all that kept Din in the crowded bunk.

‘Did you know he has a son now?’ Kay asked, and Cassian expressed his surprise by stretching his ankle until it popped.

‘Adopted,’ Din explained, unsure why he felt the need to say so.

‘How old?’ Cassian asked.

Din considered his options, and answered: ‘He’s a toddler.’

‘So Kay,’ Cassian spoke through a yawn. ‘How did you find him?’

‘Kallus was being unhelpful at him,’ Kay said.

‘You met Kallus?’ Cassian raised an eyebrow.

‘He’s very tall,’ Din said.

Cassian snorted. ‘You should see his husband.’

‘Or not,’ Kay said. ‘They’ve probably burned the base, if it’s well-known enough for bounty hunters to show up looking for the Jedi temple.’

There was a noise that sounded a lot like Cassian batting the chassis of a KX security droid to shut him up.

‘Where’re we going, then?’ he turned toward Din, pulling their bodies flush together and nuzzling into Din’s collarbone.

‘The rendezvous point on Ryloth,’ Kay sat up, sliding himself out of the bunk. ‘I’ll plot the remaining jumps.’

’We can stay here a bit longer?’ Cassian checked.

‘Six hours,’ Kay answered, and disappeared in the direction of the cockpit.

Cassian stretched up to kiss Din again, and Din kissed him back.

‘You think we can waste that much time?’ Cassian smiled. When he resumed playing with Din’s hair, Din decided he liked it very much.

‘I’m sure we’ll find a way,’ Din told him.

*

When Din woke again, bone-tired and sun-warm, the ship was docked in a Ryloth spaceport. The only sign that anyone else had been on board was a set of coordinates still programmed into the navigation system.

Din swallowed the last of the burning saltwater in his throat, and set a course for the temple.


End file.
